I want to bring in CNN military analyst Colonel Cedric Leighton. Colonel, US officials telling CNN that one of the targets is believed to be an Army radar. You have very deep experience in Iran and in this region. How do you assess this attack? Well, I think it could be several things, Larry. And a radar site is the perfect area to go after because that it once you get the radar site that blinds the forces that are using that radar picture for their activities. So it's a perfect site for the Israelis to go after. Anything to keep in mind, as we've been talking about airfields. And one of the one of the reasons that a lot of the airports have been shut down, as Nic was mentioning in his reporting, is because what Iran does is it doubles the use of their civilian airfields and civilian airports as also being Air Force officers for the Iranian air force. So in the case of Islam, the air base is co-located with the international airport in Isfahan, and it's the home to Iran's fleet of F-14 fighters, which they had acquired during the time of the shots. And those aircraft are, of course, quite old, antiquated, and they've since been upgraded in some ways using Iranian capabilities and other capabilities. But they probably pose a very limited threat to the Israelis. The only thing to keep in mind, Laura, is that when it comes to the nuclear facilities in and around Isfahan, the one that's really important is the Natanz nuclear facility, and that is 120 kilometers or about 70 miles away from Isfahan. So if you strike the area around Isfahan, you are not going to be striking the city of Isfahan. That is you're not going to be striking Natanz. And what you are telling them, as we've talked about, you are telling everybody that you can reach this area and you can, in fact, eliminate that threat or at least attack that threat if you need to do so. Colonel Leighton, interestingly, compared to the signal that Iran sent by being able to reach Israel, they issued a warning beforehand and the Iron Dome was able able to intercept the missiles, the drones. That was suggesting why some were suggesting to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to, quote unquote, take the win. What does it say that Iran could not defend against this attack? Well, for one thing, Iran does not have anything similar to the Iron Dome. So its air defenses are fairly antiquated in comparison to the Israeli air defenses. They are not effective, but they are not as effective as the Israeli air defense system, which is highly sophisticated, one of the best in the world. So that is really why you see this difference. And of course, we'll have to wait for the battle damage assessments to come out and to get some idea of exactly what was said and how effective the Israeli strikes were. But it seems like they were able to do this pretty much with impunity. And it tells us that there are basically holes in the Iranian air defense system and that the Israelis can take advantage of them if they feel the need to do so. Really important to get your anti will continue to lean on you. Cedric Leighton, retired Air Force colonel, I want to bring in Bloomberg senior editor Bobby Ghosh to the conversation. Bobby, we spoke earlier in the week about anticipating this exact reality. What do you think Iran will do next? Well, Laura, a threshold now has crossed and we are we're in sort of unknown territory for for a long time. These two countries have been at a low intensity war. But I feel like now the gloves have come off. Iran's response is unpredictable. We know the different weapons that it has at its disposal. We saw a demonstration of what it can do over the last weekend when it fired over 300 missiles and drones into Israeli territory. Very few of them actually managed to make it through those defenses that the colonel was talking about. But Iran showed that it has the capacity to fire a very large number of projectiles into Israeli territory. We also know that Iran has the capacity to attack Israel through its proxies in Lebanon, in Iraq, in in Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, as well as from the Houthis in Yemen. So we know what both sides are capable of. Until now, it's been a question of just how far each is prepared to go. But just as we were discussing earlier in the week with with this sort of escalation off of risk taking, there's always a chance that the next step up is going to be the step too far. And I feel that tonight, with Israel launching and successfully striking Iranian targets within Iran, we've reached that stage where we're now into into an area of darkness where where things can get very grim very quickly. And what's the danger of now meeting this particular moment of a broader escalation? Are you suggesting that there is some point of no return that would involve others in the region? Well, that's the that has been the fear of the Biden administration throughout, which has been which has been why it is it has tried very hard for weeks now, and especially in the last 48 and 72 hours, it has tried very, very hard to restrain Iraq. I beg your pardon? Israel from responding to Iran's latest attack. Now that Israel has sort of essentially brushed aside American concerns and gone ahead and made this attack, yes, I am concerned that we now are in a we've now reached a stage where what comes next is very, very hard to predict. The the Iranians are trying to play down the attack, but it's nighttime. It is it's a little hard to know the extent of the damage. And I'm not so sure that if the damage is indeed substantial, I'm not sure Iran will be able to conceal that for very long. And there's also the question of national pride, particularly from the hardliners of of the Iranian right, who control that country. They will feel like they have to respond just as the the hard right in Israel felt after Friday's attack that they had to respond. We're now in the realm of extreme positions on both sides, coming to the floor, becoming the dominant position on both sides. Bobby Ghosh, thank you so much. I want to reference in play right now what the Iranian foreign minister told CNN's Erin BURNETT just earlier tonight. Parcel came up our response to the Israeli regime that was limited in their and on this stayed within a minimum of frameworks, whereas we could have given a much harsher response to the Israeli regime. Following that, we announced that this response is within the framework work of legitimate defense according to international laws, but we will not continue. However, in case the Israeli regime embarks on adventurism again and takes action again, it's the interests of Iran. Then next response from us will be immediate and at a maximum level it will be decisive. Three very daunting words. It will be immediate. At a maximum level, it will be decisive. I want to bring in CNN global affairs analyst Kim Dozier. Kim, the foreign minister, you've heard the words he's spoken that it would be immediate. How does the United States now go about managing what has obviously now been elevated to the next level? Well, one of the scary things that we've been talking about this evening is the fact that the Iranians are closing the airspace and closing all those different airports because they could be doing that to keep civilian aircraft safe or they could be doing that to prepare for immediate retaliation, which is why at this point, I imagine U.S. diplomats, Western diplomats are reaching out to anyone who has Iran number to say, we've got to stop this now. We are going to try to hold Israel back. Friends, Iran, try to hold them back because this is something that can tumble right down that escalation ladder. As we've been talking about, and lead to something really dire, an all out back and forth between the two and a decision by Iran to go nuclear and Iran's nuclear facilities. I mean, Israel can try to strike them and they have struck some in the past, but they need bunker busters to hit the most sensitive parts of the sites. And only the U.S. has that. So we could tumble into a much more conventional war that pulls in the U.S. and Iraq doesn't like that all this is happening from its territory or over its airspace. So you get a lot of countries caught in between. And that's why there's power in that. That's when people will hopefully, perhaps Russia, perhaps China step in and say, okay, this is going too far.
